Access2Forest (KA8041)
Tools for enhancing access to forest resources in cross border bioeconomy
Accessibility of forest resources plays a major part in operational planning and operational costs in the forestry sector, both in Finland and even more so in Russia. Forest road planning requires suitable, accurate and objective baseline data. Traditional methods of collecting forest road data by visual inspections and manual measurements are often expensive and not accurate enough. Expensive road construction costs and budget overflows can be avoided by using innovative planning tools and data sources. Hence, the specific objective of the Access2Forest -project is to develop advanced planning technology for the forest logistics and more specifically for forest road construction and maintenance planning.
Access2Forest is a joint project of Business Joensuu (lead), Arbonaut Ltd, Finnish Forest Centre, Riveria, Lesnoe Bureau Partner LLC and Forest Holding Company Karellesprom.
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Relevance
The Republic of Karelia and North Karelia have similar natural and climate features, and thereforeforestry businesses effectiveness could be seen as nearly the same in both areas. However, forestry business is in fact further developed in the Finnish side of the border. There are several constraints in the forestry business of the Republic of Karelia - for example legislation and human resources - but the crucial problem lies in forest road network. For instance, the density of forest roads in Finland is about 10 km per hectare, while the same indicator in the Republic of Karelia is 1,5 to 3 km per hectare. Though this advantage in Finland causes another problem, i.e. maintenance of forest roads, which demands immense amount of resources. The disadvantage of poorly developed forest road network in the Republic of Karelia demands extensive amount of resources as well, but in this case for the construction. Hence, good planning of forest road construction and maintenance can be seen as the best solution so far to reduce costs and also to raise business efficiency.
The specific objective of Access2Forest project is to have advanced planning technology developed in the forest logistics industry. Optimal use of the latest technology in data collection campaigns brings efficiency for road planning operations too. The project’s aim is to reduce the operation costs of logging activities (forest side), of forest road planning, building and maintenance by promoting the use of new technologies developed in several initiatives, by training the stakeholders and by demonstrating state of the art solution in the sector. The sustainability will be ensured by the support provided to companies of the sector and developing new business opportunities. The project will make a change related to the information and the new technologies accessible for the sector actors in both side of the border, allowing them to improve their harvesting and forest road planning, construction and maintenance activities, with a positive effect on the competitiveness of the industry.
Implementation
Access2Forest project is implemented between January 2020 - December 2021 with a total budget of 418 174 €.
The main three outputs of Access2Forest are;
- a demo programme for optimizing road network planning and maintenance;
- a manual with recommendations for cost efficient approach for planning together with a Master Plan for road maintenance; and
- task-level work models for excavator work, which leads to more excavator pilots being efficiently trained, evaluated and tutored at their worksite. To achieve the outputs of the project and to have the positive effect on the cross border bioeconomy, the collaboration of multiple Finnish and Russian forestry expertise companies is required.
Project Manager
Ekaterina Miettinen,
Business Joensuu
E-mail: ekaterina.miettinen@businessjoensuu.fi
Phone: +358 50 310 9511 or +358 10 419 8030